The Ravagers

VIII

THE MOOSEHEAD LODGE in Brandon made a valiant effort to look rustic and backwoodsy, but the phony log-cabin architecture and the stray antlers and skulls nailed up around the place didn't succeed in camouflaging the basic motel modern. I drove past to look the situation over, parked a couple of blocks away, and walked back. There was no point in advertising my visit to Elaine.

Unit number fourteen was easy to locate from a distance, by the big number on the door. It faced the swimming pool patio. A last year's Ford was parked in front-the little dressed-up Falcon with the hot V-8 engine, I noticed with envy. I'd had quite a day of driving along the Trans-Canada Highway after my interview with Genevieve Drilling. For a pretty woman, she handled a pickup-and-house-trailer combo with surprising dash and precision, and I had a hunch she'd been watching her big, truck-type rearview mirrors carefully and maneuvering to make life just as miserable as she could for me, trailing along behind.

The Canadian drivers along the road had done their best to help her. There hadn't been one who'd let a Volkswagen pass him without a fight, particularly a Volkswagen with U.S. plates. I hadn't met such an aggressive bunch of wheel-jockeys since the last time I drove in competition on a real track, and the bug was underpowered for playing high-speed traffic-tag. Hence my envious glance at the jazzy little Ford with the big mill up front.

I strolled around the swimming pool in a leisurely manner. Partly it was an act for anyone who might be watching, but partly I guess I was stalling mildly, torn between my personal desire to see Elaine again and my professional knowledge that the minute I did see her I'd have to start lying to her. We were on opposite sides. My job was to get the documents through and hers was to stop them. At least she thought it was, and I was not allowed to tell her she was actually there just to make a tricky plant look plausible. There was also a little question of murder between us, but I wasn't brooding heavily over that. Greg had been no great friend of mine. If his death didn't bother Mac, it didn't bother me. Nevertheless, it was another area of uncertainty and possible conflict.

Nobody seemed to be watching me as I came abreast of Number 14. I was just about to commit myself by turning that way when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a slight movement of the knob, as if someone inside had been about to open the door but had decided against it upon hearing my footsteps outside. Somewhere in my head the warning lights went up on the control board and the sirens began to scream, figuratively speaking. I reminded myself that I was an agent on a mission, not a schoolboy bringing his girl a bunch of posies.

It could, of course, be Elaine herself preparing to fling open the door and greet me with loving arms, but if so why didn't she do it? I moved on without pausing, to the soft-drink machine in the corner of the patio. It took me a while to find a Canadian dime and a little longer to extract the bottle and pry off the cap. The door to Number 14 remained closed.

I walked back deliberately the way I had come, past Elaine's door, taking an occasional swig of the stuff in the bottle, some local preparation that tasted like a certain cough syrup of my childhood, diluted with carbonated water. Around the next corner was the office, with a big picture window. I went inside and found a magazine rack strategically located nearby. I stood there browsing and drinking my medicated-tasting drink, and presently a man came into view at the big window. He walked past, looking neither right nor left.

He could have been any man from any unit in the motel, of course, except that he fit a description I'd recently memorized. He was about five eleven, about thirty-five, he had dark, wavy hair with a touch of gray at the temples, and he had regular, distinguished-looking features. He also had a neat, narrow, dark moustache that was not part of the description, but moustaches are easy to grow.

When he had gone by, I looked up from the magazine I'd been pretending to examine and watched him walk out across the general parking lot that served the office and restaurant. If he looked around, he'd see me through the glass, but I knew that if he was Hans Ruyter he wouldn't look around. He was a trained man-not one of their best, Mac had said, but competent-and he knew better than to give himself away by glancing over his shoulder in a furtive manner, particularly if he had something to be furtive about.

He walked straight to a parked car. In keeping with his distinguished appearance it was a distinguished car: a big, tan Mercedes sedan, its dignity only slightly marred by the cute curly fins the German designers had stuck on it in belated imitation of the American practice of a few years back. I made a note of the license, a California number. Well, if you want to blend with the tourists on any highway on the continent, you get yourself a set of California plates. I don't think anybody in that state ever stays home.

I watched him drive away smoothly in his expensive imported car. I didn't try to follow. My own car was two blocks away. Anyway, I didn't think that as Dave Clevenger, private dick, I was supposed to ever recognize Mr. Ruyter, let alone tail him. And as Matt Helm, agent of the U.S. government, I was under strict orders not to interfere with him, quite the contrary. The fact that I was anxious to stay and find out what he'd been up to in Elaine's room had, I hope, no influence on my decision, since it was more or less a private worry.

I forced myself to give the Mercedes plenty of time to get clear, while I bought the magazine I'd been examining, finished my drink, and asked the lady at the desk where she wanted me to dispose of the bottle. She graciously consented to take care of it for me. I went out of the office and walked slowly back to the door I had passed twice before. I don't suppose I really expected an answer to my knock. There had been a certain stiffness in Hans Ruyter's bearing, a desperately strained naturalness, that had said quite clearly that here was a man who expected hell to break loose behind him, and hoped to get far away before it did.

There was no response to my knock and no sound of movement inside the room. I drew a long breath and glanced around casually. Everything was quiet I reached in my pocket for my wallet and got out the piece of plastic I'd used once before here in Canada, the one masquerading as a credit card. As I shielded the lock with my body, I carefully avoided remembering the last time I'd opened a door in this illegal manner, and what I'd found on the other side. At least I tried.

The lock was easy. The door swung back. I took extra precautions, going in. The fact that one man had left didn't guarantee that the place was safe; and I wasn't carrying my revolver today. It was hidden away in the VW where nobody was likely to find it without dismantling the car. With the highways full of convict-hunting policemen-we'd hit two roadblocks on the way-wearing an undeclared firearm in what was, after all, a foreign country, had been too much of a risk. However, I did have a rather special little knife, and I had it ready as I entered, fast. Nothing happened. I got the door closed and went once more through the routine of checking closet and bathroom. Then I shut the knife and put it away and went over to the bed where she lay.

I won't say I'd been expecting it, but after seeing Ruyter I wasn't really surprised. So there was no excuse for the sick, shocked feeling I experienced, looking down at her. Actually, it was very peaceful. No acid had been used here. There was a small-caliber automatic pistol in her hand, the little.25 that will hardly shoot through a heavy overcoat, and there was a dark spot on her temple, that was all. There were some powderburns-there always are, with a contact wound-and there was a little blood, but nothing like the mess you get with the larger calibers.

She was wearing a dress tonight, perhaps put on for my benefit: a gay summery print that made her small tomboy face look very pale. A pair of high-heeled white pumps stood neatly on the rug beside the bed. Her eyes were closed. Except for the pallor, and the gun and the wound, she could simply have slipped off her shoes and lain down to take a nap. He'd set the scene carefully. A portable typewriter, presumably hers, stood open on the long, glass-topped gizmo along one wall, that served as combination dresser and writing table. The machine had a piece of paper in it, displaying one line of writing: I'M SORRY I MUST HAVE BEEN CRAZY GOODBYE.

Beside the typewriter stood an empty chemical reagent bottle with a glass stopper. The label had been defaced by the potent liquid that had run down it in streaks, but I could still read the words: Acid Sulfuric, cone., USP. Beside the bottle lay a small hypodermic syringe containing a residue of drug that, I had no doubt, would check out the same as the stuff that had killed Greg.

I didn't believe it for a minute, of course, but the picture was clear enough for the stupidest policeman: unable to live with her guilt, Elaine had set out all the evidence, typed her farewell note, and shot herself. Well, she was the logical fall guy for Greg's murder, if you had to have a fall guy. I'd suspected her myself.

I went back to the bed. The shock was wearing off. I suppose I should have been feeling grief in its place. Well, when the job was over, I could get drunk and cry in my beer, or whiskey, or gin. Right now I had other things to do, and I took from my pocket the stained white kid glove I'd found in Greg's room and tried it on the right hand. It was much too large, it slipped on and off loosely, which was just as well, since the operation wasn't one I found particularly enjoyable. I looked at the damaged glove, frowning, trying to reconstruct the murder in which it had figured, and the murder in which it had not, and the stages by which one had led to the other.

A plausible sequence of events wasn't hard to imagine, if you dismissed the notion of a frame-up and took the glove to be exactly what it seemed: a betraying clue dropped at the scene by the real murderess, call her Genevieve Drilling for convenience. Afterwards, realizing that she'd left it, Genevieve could have made contact somehow with her accomplice, Ruyter, and explained the spot she was in. He could have agreed to clean up after her, by giving the police a solution of the case so simple and tidy that they'd be glad to overlook the minor discrepancy of a glove that didn't quite fit. In any case, whatever his reasons, he'd obviously come here to tie up the loose ends of one murder by committing another.

Of course, neither Genevieve nor her Hans knew that the police didn't have the missing glove: I had it. Perhaps Elaine would not have died if they'd known that. And perhaps she would not have died if she had not been expecting me and therefore, perhaps, despite my warning, had not been quite as careful about opening the door as she should have been. I grimaced and shoved the glove back into my pocket. You can take the guilt of the whole world on your shoulders any time you want to try, and many people do, but I didn't have time for the sackcloth-and-ashes routine just then.

As I started for the door, the telephone rang. I hesitated, but it seemed useful to know who was calling, so I took out my handkerchief and used it to pick up the instrument on the third ring. A young male voice I'd heard before in some wet woods in the dark, said:

"Elaine? We just got word from Denver on this Clevenger character you're seeing tonight. He seems to be okay, a real, honest-to-God private eye… Elaine? Who's there?"

The decision wasn't hard to make. I could hang up and leave Larry Fenton and Marcus Johnston guessing, but Elaine had obviously told them she was expecting me-which answered one of Mac's questions. All three of them had apparently been working together. Under the circumstances, the remaining two would be bound to come around to question me when they learned what had happened to Elaine. It was better to give an impression of boyish frankness.

I said, "This is the Clevenger character. If you're the Larry character, you'd better get over here. Bring a shovel, you've got something to bury. If you want me afterwards, I'll be out at the campground. If you don't know where, it's time you found out."

"Listen, you stay right where you-"

I put the phone down. I looked at the bed, but there wasn't anybody there to talk to. I mean, sentimentally telling a dead girl goodbye, or dramatically promising to avenge her, is just a way of talking to yourself, and they lock people up for that. Besides, I reflected grimly, I wasn't being paid to wield the sword of retribution. On the contrary, I was under strict orders to help the murderers escape free and clear.